Started playing this now that theres a free to play option (the subscription fee was silly expensive before). I've spent $$ on cartel coins for preferred status, so EA/Bioware/Lucas/Disney still get some cheddar out of me though. It's the first time i nerded it up enough to play an mmo, but this is an amazing game thus far.

Keep an eye out for a Lv. 14 jedi sentinel named Canhawk of the Leigonofboom family tree. Currently hanging out on the Harbinger server, somewhere on Courscant.

Huttball - The majority of the team should always be near the ball carrier. Always. Doesn't matter whether the ball carrier is an enemy or a teammate; either you're protecting the ball carrier, or trying to kill him. If you can get teamwork going, it's good to have one or two people in the enemy area up on the walkways so the ball carrier can pass the ball up to them, or intervene them (friendly charge) if they're a Guardian, or get pulled if there's a Sage up there. There are different strategies for pre-made groups of people that are all on voice chat working together, etc.; so the stuff I'm listing is for PUGs, or pick-up groups. Also, when it looks like your team's about to cap, SOMEBODY should be heading to the middle to try and pick the ball up again. (Stunning someone just before the ball's about to spawn if an enemy is there waiting for it also is something you need to do.)

Alderaan - Before the match starts, try to get people to either split to the sides (4 to snow, 4 to grass) or get 6 to go middle, and 2 to go either snow or grass. I prefer the 4-4 strategy. You can run between them underneath middle to defend both, and it's uncommon to see the enemy team send more than 2, and very rare to see them send more than 3, to either side; so 4 grass and 4 snow almost always results in two being captured. The enemy gets middle easily, but doesn't have time to run and stop you from capping either side, typically. Then it's just providing support back and forth between the two as quickly as possible to hold them. Remember, for the two side nodes, you can fly directly down to them after dying when you control them. (Extra speeder bikes show up on the far let and right sides in the spawn area when you control them.)

Voidstar - This one is the most gear-dependent, which is annoying. It's best to generally have EVERYONE rush one side or the other. The other team always has to have at least one person watching the other side, so if you can convince everyone at the start to either go right or left, you can usually overwhelm and get the bomb planted, eventually. Otherwise what you can do also, is have a stealth go to the other side to try and plant the bomb. Scoundrels work really well for this, because they have amazing CC capabilities. This warzone almost always results in the side with the better gear winning, though; or assuming equal gear on both sides, whichever side has a couple of healers that are healing.

What can also work is if you grab 1 or 2 people to run with you if almost all of you are on one side, so what you do is wait until the door opens for the enemy and they all drop down on the side with a ton of people, then try to "escape" with a couple people and kill the one person defending on the other side, and plant it. This tends to work well, too; but you can't just run willy-nilly and do it when you feel like it, it only works if at least 7 people are on one side, forcing everyone that just came out from the enemy spawn area to drop down on your side; so you watch for the door to open, and the instant they jump down, you leave.

Ancient Hypergate - What constitutes best strategy here varies, depending on how well-geared your team is compared to the enemy team. Assuming you have approximately equal gear, or you have better gear, you should just get your pylon each time and have 1-2 people defend it, with the rest staying in the middle and retrieving orbs and bringing them back to your base. Killing enemy players gives points, so if you can control the middle and keep killing them, you'll win by a large margin. If you're outgeared and the enemy controls the middle or they're just killing you way more than you're killing them, then your only hope of winning is to try and steal their node just before the timer hits zero.

If you have a stealth, they can try doing it solo if there's only ONE person defending the enemy node. Otherwise, go there with 2-4 teammates and try to kill or distract everyone enough for you to get the node. It takes 6 or 8 seconds to cap it, I forget which, and you have to have it capped by the time it hits zero; so starting to cap it with 5 seconds left results in nothing. You need to give yourself some time. Typically, you'd start heading to the enemy side if you're at the pylon on your side with 80-90 seconds remaining. You're going to want to run through one of the side tunnels to do this, not the middle, because if half the enemy team sees you and comes to defend, you're screwed. even if you outgear them and can kill them, it's easy to just last long enough to stop you from getting theirs. A clever team that is considerably under-geared can still win this warzone if they can capture both pylons for one of the rounds, since it not only gives you extra points for that round, but it prevents those points from going to the enemy.

Denova (Novare Coast) - For this one, the biggest point that people don't understand is that it doesn't matter what nodes you control, as long as you get two of them. Every single time you play this one, you will see a ton of people that think the "key" is to control the middle. (South.) This is BS. As long as you control two of the three nodes, you're getting points and the enemy is getting nothing. What I normally do is let all the sheeple run to south, but I go with a friend (I rarely PvP alone, I'm typically with one friend.) to the close node where you exit from the north entrance of your base, we cap that, then immediately run to the other node at the north end. (It's a triangle; NW, NE, and S; and which side you're on will vary.) A lot of the time, you can end up getting the two northern nodes while most everyone else is fighting at south.

Typically, the other team will have only one person going to their non-south node, or they'll send two but then one goes to assist south as soon as they cap it, so by the time you arrive it's one person there anyways. Then, assuming you capped the two northern ones, you BEG for support at both of them in ops chat and ask people to stop going to south. People ignore it half the time, so good luck. Another strategy here if you can't keep the nodes you get is to ping pong between them. If you see a large force coming to one of the ones you control, and there's not enough defense with you to hold it and kill them, then just run into them and die, and try to get a couple of people with you to go to the one they currently control. Who cares if they get one of yours, when you can go kill the one or two people at the one they control (south, in this case) and take it? All that matters is is you control two. I've won plenty of games without ever holding the same two nodes for more than a couple of minutes at most, because me and a couple people keep going wherever their large force just came FROM.

However, being level 14, you only have a few abilities and you'll be quasi-worthless because of it. Once you're in your 30s, you'll have a lot more utility and use from talents and trained abilities you've gotten along the way.

I honestly don't know, Jester. This game's not based around being able to buy your way to the top, though. You can mostly do it, but the cost would be ridiculously immense. Also, blow me; I hate botters.

This game's worthy to play just for the leveling experience. That's a first in the MMORPG world.

Wow, that's a lot of info Roland. Many thanks. However if I'm not playing Madden, I really only game for the storyline RPG aspect of it all. I look at it like a 40-60 hour long interactive movie. With the kids and the wife and the dogs et al, I'm FAR too unreliable for any of the "team" and "community" based aspects of an MMO game. Not that I don't want to give it a try, but I'm just one crying baby or puking dog away from dropping out, so I don't bother to get involved (as I don't want to piss everyone off by flaking out). Maybe one day I'll call in "sick" from work, stick the dog in the yard and just geek it up wit cha all day...

RolandDeschain wrote:I honestly don't know, Jester. This game's not based around being able to buy your way to the top, though. You can mostly do it, but the cost would be ridiculously immense. Also, blow me; I hate botters.

This game's worthy to play just for the leveling experience. That's a first in the MMORPG world.

I'm just messin with ya. I used to bot WoW but it was more for the enjoyment of tweaking the code behind the bot than 'getting ahead' in the game. You can't get ahead in WoW. Once the game got stale, I found that botting made it fun again for awhile.

Botting for profit is a full time job, and it doesn't pay as well as my real job. I never quite turned that corner though, just knew some who did.

Doug Baldwin took a hit to the head when he was younger and now can't remember how to drop a football. - SomersetHawk

Yeah, I botted with Glider for a while when it was still around in WoW. Mad money. WoW can go to hell, though. Seriously, however; install SWTOR and level a character. The class stories are amazing. I recommend a Jedi Knight if you're playing Republic side, or a Bounty Hunter on the Empire side, though both Sith classes on Empire also have very good stories; the BH one is the best in the game, IMO. Make sure you go dark side REGARDLESS of which side you play on, though; they have better and more entertaining dialogue. The BH story as dark side is hysterically awesome.

SWTOR was a fantastic game. I played it with a hardcore guild ranked #1 in the US. I really wish I would of played it under different circumstances as I feel I would probably still be playing it. To any who love Star Wars and enjoy MMORPGs this is a terrific game to play.

Make fun all you want; have you actually leveled a character to 50 in SWTOR? Tons of class-specific dialogue with awesome dark side choices, fully voiced for you and your character. Great story. Leveling is actually enjoyable in SWTOR, unlike pretty much every other MMO ever made by anyone, ever.

Make fun all you want; have you actually leveled a character to 50 in SWTOR? Tons of class-specific dialogue with awesome dark side choices, fully voiced for you and your character. Great story. Leveling is actually enjoyable in SWTOR, unlike pretty much every other MMO ever made by anyone, ever.

That's kind of like being proud that the 2009 Seahawks had one of the best punters in the game. Leveling is not the point of a good MMO.

BTW - TERA was 100x more enjoyable. If you're going to make everyone do the exact same thing, at least make the combat engaging.

Sarlacc, on comparing .NET to Soccer: And why not? It's a bunch of people running around in circles, feigning pain, and never scoring.

Asheron's Call (combat was ahead of its time, but I spent so much time exploring because you could run away from a LOT of trouble if you wandered into the wrong area... and fighting Olthoi (sp) in the caverns.

TERA (themepark linear world, but the combat is great)

DAoC (another ahead-of-its-time deal, mostly because it found a good solo/group balance back at a time when EQ was the dominant game and you couldn't solo past level 8 or so)

SWTOR would've been great, IMO, 6 years earlier. For an MMO vet like me, I kept saying "I've done this before, it just has a very nice coat of paint"

Sarlacc, on comparing .NET to Soccer: And why not? It's a bunch of people running around in circles, feigning pain, and never scoring.

Asheron's Call (combat was ahead of its time, but I spent so much time exploring because you could run away from a LOT of trouble if you wandered into the wrong area... and fighting Olthoi (sp) in the caverns.

Oh, the memories. Olthoi is the correct spelling. Best mob type ever invented in gaming; were you playing when the Olthoi Queen event happened?

Snohomie wrote:SWTOR would've been great, IMO, 6 years earlier. For an MMO vet like me, I kept saying "I've done this before, it just has a very nice coat of paint"

It's too WoW-like in combat and end game "content", I agree; but like WoW, and most MMOs in general, the biggest failing is that it's based on freaking gear. Everything comes down to improving your stupid stats. Dumbest crap ever, I hate it. In WoW, you couldn't even stop playing for four months or you wouldn't be competitive in PvP anymore because of gear.

We need MMOs to head in the direction of Asheron's Call; gear basically doesn't matter, and you do things in the game for enjoyment, not because you need "teh aw3s0m3 purpz" simply to have a chance at PvP or PvE.

WOW's popularity ruined MMOs. It attracted companies like Activision and EA which only led to crappy products and horrible customer service. Good thing the consoles are stepping up their game. Oh wait………

Roland - I agree with everything and yeah, I remember the Olthoi Queen event. So awesome. AC's special in-game events were as well done as any in the MMO genre.

Favorite experience, in any game, was taking down the White Rabbit for the first time in Frostfell's history. That motha was one nasty bugger. Killed half the server a couple times.

Galen - I have been a huge AA fan for years too. After what Trion did with Defiance, though, I'm a little worried they'll eff it up bigtime. We need AA to save the genre.

(I'm also a big fan of Camelot Unchained. Different type of MMO, but after 13 years I am really bored of killing mobs, especially with tab targeting. Nobody did RvR better than DAoC, and the devs seem get the demand for a world that we "live" (for me it's mostly die) in, rather than a place we travel through and leave)

Sarlacc, on comparing .NET to Soccer: And why not? It's a bunch of people running around in circles, feigning pain, and never scoring.

Make fun all you want; have you actually leveled a character to 50 in SWTOR? Tons of class-specific dialogue with awesome dark side choices, fully voiced for you and your character. Great story. Leveling is actually enjoyable in SWTOR, unlike pretty much every other MMO ever made by anyone, ever.

Oh I totally agree with you. I'm actually really digging the story line of this game. I'm blown away by the sheer massiveness of all the dialogue options across all the different character classes, worlds plus the light/dark decisions and their ramifications. It's really an amazing game. I really enjoy the fact it lets me bang my padawan, even if there's no graphic video of it like (M)ass Effect. Plus I have TWO lightsabers that go "wroom, wroom". How fricken cool is THAT!?

I just couldn't resist taking the piss because... well... you just sounded like such a huge nerd fanboy when talking about the "leveling experience".

Oh dude... weather here is so fricken amazing right now. I've got my solar visor in full effect. We've taken to tossing the football around in the park across the street from the office at lunch; the park where all the ladies come to be 3/4 naked in the sun by the water. Very good times...

I have a lvl 50 Sith Inquisitor and a lvl 44 Bounty Hunter. This is my first MMO and I really enjoy it in chunks. I'll go a few weeks playing as much as possible every day and loving it, then I skip a few days and almost forget about it for a month or 2. I think sometimes the tediousness and repetition of the missions just gets to me and I get bored of it. And being that this is my first MMO and I've never been much of a gamer I can't help but feel like there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm missing out of simply because I don't know what I'm doing... guilds, pvp, crafting & other tradeskills & such... I just don't really understand it because I'm a goddam noob.

RolandDeschain wrote:Remake the original Asheron's Call with everything being modern, and I don't even want to guess at how much I'd pay to buy that, haha.

Tell me about it. I know so many other people who feel the exact same way. I still keep in touch with quite a few people I met playing that game and if they kickstartered it they'd get their cash no problem.

I had one of the first few "battlemages" on thistledown, way before they added in the ability to respec, back then that was a tough road. Nowadays all the MMO's are way too easy. At least with AC you could maximize your risk/reward based on how you wanted to play.